


a river, moving

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Pre-Trespasser, Sex Toys, Soppily Romantic Rope Bondage, Table Sex, Unorthodox Use of Fine Dwarven Crafts, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 17:03:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10283834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: In which Bull bends Dorian lovingly over a table.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Katie is to blame for this getting posted. Katie is p. much the best. ♥
> 
> The fandom had a shortage of sex on a table, so my mission was clear. This is all you're going to find here: supremely indulgent porn.
> 
> Dear ancient kinkmeme anon who just asked for desk porn, any variety—this is for you.
> 
> Now, I'll see myself out.

"This morning," Dorian says as he climbs steaming and dripping out of the stone bathtub, "I have a mind to be taken."

Bull looks up from cleaning his greaves on the bench where he set up a workspace. Dorian leaves wet footprints across the pinewood floor of the inn room, and Bull stands, stained rag in one hand and oil flask in the other, as Dorian tilts his head down. His fingers are light at Bull's nape, his mouth seeking Bull's own.

It is a repeated gift, Dorian lowering his walls in this way. Bull lets the kiss peter out before saying, "Right after your bath?"

"I'll have time for another after you've left." A nibble at Bull's bottom lip. Dorian's hair is dry, waiting for him to tame it with oils finer and more fragrant than the one Bull is using for his gear. "I'm just here to take in the autumn sights of fair Highever, remember?"

Manoeuvring the flask onto the bench, Bull takes hold of Dorian's hip through his carelessly donned towel. The last logs of the night before glow in the fireplace.

"You're becoming a right kept man, _kadan_."

"How dare you." Dorian tucks a kiss under Bull's clavicle. " _You_ decided your proud display of martial prowess was better off without any mages."

More like the Marcher house hiring the Chargers is a bit too literal about the Chant of Light for Bull's comfort. He told Dalish to sit this one out, too. "Yeah, well. I've got touchy nobles on every side."

"You're bringing Cremisius, so it can't be the Tevinter aspect."

Bull has no doubt that Dorian truly wants him; they know each other well enough to be honest about that. Still, a late morning tumble isn't the only thing under discussion. "You sound like you're sorry you won't be brooding over some Ostwick heirlooms with us."

"I'd prefer 'wistful', maybe. It is no matter. I'll stare out into the heath and pretend I'm caught in a tragic Calenhadian romance."

Bull drops the rag and risks getting clove oil in Dorian's hair; the sigh Dorian gives when he strokes through the messy curls says it was the right call.

"It'll be a couple of days." He draws Dorian into a kiss.

 _You'll be gone for months soon._ That wouldn't be fair, just as it isn't fair that Dorian's leaving for Tevinter before Satinalia. They haven't decided on the day, but the annum is the furthest limit for finding passage before the stormy season.

"Thus I make my demands while I can."

Bull needs to finish fixing his kit. The Marcher nobles wanted an effective but not glaring mercenary presence over their warehouse, so he's keeping the team small and bringing his best.

On the other hand, there's Dorian. The long months of the last years have not dimmed the desire between them. Rather they've deepened it, let it carve paths into habit and comfort, into an untroubled closeness.

" 'Taken'", Bull repeats. "I get any say in that?"

"Any you care to claim." In contrast to Dorian's tart tone, his fingertips stroke across Bull's chest. Bull tenses at a snap of lust as Dorian lays his mouth there, circling a nipple. "We agreed, no? Each of us must have a voice here."

The context of that agreement was not their bedroom escapades. The reminder still wakes a helpless fondness in Bull.

The room has few frills: the bathtub built into the floor in the Fereldan style, a thick-columned bed in the corner and a sturdy ashwood table before the fireplace. A couple of chairs are scattered about. The shutters let in the sallow dawn, but the lanterns in the wall sconces add their glow. Bull returns his gaze to Dorian, to the caprice in his eyes and the softness of his mouth.

"Think I've got just the thing."

"Good." Dorian twines his arms behind his neck, crooked delight in his voice. "I want you deep in me. I want you so that I'll feel you between my thighs on every step, until you get back."

"That's a lot of words for 'fuck me hard'."

"You love it when I get verbose. There was that one time I brought you off with that alone, remember?"

Bull laughs, warmed by both the memory and Dorian's candour. Pulls him up and in close, taut on his toes. "All in good time. C'mere."

He guides Dorian up to the table. The fire fills the air with smoke-tinged warmth, which works in their favour now. As Bull makes to detour to the clothing chest, Dorian tugs him back for a peck to his jaw. Play and reassurance, all wound together.

When he comes back with a pair of thick hempen scarves, Dorian's dove-grey and his own striped one, Dorian laughs. "I see how it is."

"You gave me a challenge. I'm just providing."

Cradling his face in both hands, Dorian kisses him deeply, for long thoughtless seconds. The ridge of a healing scratch roughens his lower lip. In two weeks it'll be gone, smoothed away. Bull slides his teeth over the subtle seam, draws the tip of his tongue over it so that Dorian gasps.

"Now who is obsessing over whose scars? Not that you could accuse me of such, with the way you glorify your own injuries."

Sometimes, when in a mellow mood, Dorian will go over Bull's body healed hurt by hurt, fingers whorling heat into stiffened muscle, kissing the marks left by long-pulled arrows and smatters of magefire.

"That knife could've opened your face. It just grazed you."

"Proof of life, hm?" Dorian smiles, a little twisted. "I assure you, I'm entirely here. If you'd care for further demonstration?"

Bull lets him claim one more kiss, sinks into it with a sighing breath, and then turns Dorian around with an irrefutable hand.

It makes for a pretty picture: Dorian, bent onto his belly across the smooth-worn tabletop, candlelight dripping over his back. Bull loops the scarves around the table legs and ties the knots tight enough that they won't slip Dorian's wrists, but leaves him enough slack that he can hold himself up on his elbows. A pillow under his hips settles them more comfortably.

That, and it raises his ass into lovely relief. Bull runs his fingertips up the back of his thigh and the edge of a buttock, deliberating. His mouth prickles from Dorian's kiss.

Dorian gave him a goal. The route there is his to draw.

"You ludicrous, predictable man." Dorian lays his cheek on his arm.

"You've got a beautiful ass, _kadan._ Be a waste to just stick my cock in it and be done." He feels it out, the familiar heft of Dorian's buttocks.

Dorian's shoulders rise, then descend, when Bull kisses the nape of his neck. The span of his back, stretched upon the table, lies warm under Bull's mouth. He probes his fingers down to cup Dorian's balls even as he licks the tender place under Dorian's shoulder blade, the one that always makes him shiver.

This time's no different. Dorian's fingernails rasp on the wood. Even without touching it, Bull senses the heat flooding to Dorian's cock, stoking his anticipation. He squeezes, carefully, and is rewarded with Dorian bucking into his palm. "Bull."

A goad and a surrender in one word. The days when Dorian needed to spit fire at him at every turn are long past.

He presses wet caresses down Dorian's spine and the pad of a thumb in between his ass cheeks. A curl over the supple give of his hole. Dorian gasps. Bull kneels to fit himself between Dorian's legs. "Patience."

" _Fasta vass._ You had the gall to—to claim a shortness of time." A finger against his ass won't shut Dorian up. It does at least hitch his voice pretty delectably.

 _So that I'll feel you between my thighs on every step._ Bull lets that echo in his mind and spread into sticky heat in his gut. Every stutter in Dorian's breath tugs at his own cock.

"Wouldn't want me to leave with my kit in bad repair, would you?" He bites a dark, deliberate mark into Dorian's ass.

"Andraste in _flames_ , if you think I give a fig about your kit—"

Bull presses the flat of his tongue behind his balls. Dorian's complaint drops into a shuddering quiet as Bull spreads his buttocks. A hundred ways of fucking each other, from the filthy to the worshipful, from the haphazard to the kind that leaves them both sore for days, and he still relishes the way Dorian waits. Still, subsumed, open to Bull's care.

Bull drags his tongue from taint to top, lingering across Dorian's hole. He groans even as Dorian does, drinking in his naked need, and licks into him with purpose that sends him arching against the table. "Oh, oh, _Bull_."

Several more strokes push him steadily higher. Dorian grips the edge of the table, his noises muffled behind grit teeth. Bull moves then to lap at the rim, in firm, maddening passes.

For a fleeting moment, he indulges the idea of just slicking himself and sinking into Dorian, fucking him without distraction or diversion—it'd be good, it always is, but he has a plan.

"You miserable, wretched tease." Dorian bows with exultant tension, his voice running dry. "That's marvellous. Don't stop."

One more time, Bull curls the tip of his tongue as deep inside Dorian as he can, tastes and incites his need. Holds him open and kisses his hole wetly and lazily. Dorian's ass flexes against his grip. "Bull—love, please—"

Such guarded words, once, falling easily from Dorian. He should treasure them.

Ducking back with a gasp to collect himself, he rises. Dorian slumps, his face hidden against a half-fisted hand, between laughter and frustration. "Ah. How prettily shall I beg this time, then?"

He's sharp enough to swing right back into tart amusement. Bull bows over him, bites a kiss into his heaving shoulder, and says low, "Thought I'd let you choose. Got something back in Denerim. Either I get you ready with my mouth, or I can show you now."

"Well." Dorian turns his head back a fraction. "I am fond of surprises. But you are in a bargaining mood, so may I ask what the catch is?"

"There's got to be a catch?"

"I know you."

"That's fair." Too easy, these days, to turn a free hour into a many-threaded scheme of pleasure or competition, as if it could stave off the truths waiting at the door. 

"Quite," Dorian says into his small silence. "Do elaborate."

He draws one more breath against Dorian's skin, beading with sweat, flush with his arousal. "I'm gonna show you, and I'll fuck you just as you like after. But I don't want to hear a word out of that sweet mouth before I say so."

A laugh hums through Dorian. He sets a hand flat on the tabletop. "Very good. I accept these terms."

"That's six words," Bull mutters, as if something in him didn't shiver to the truth of Dorian's ready agreement. He can pretend.

Dorian's hair tumbles from his neck as he relaxes, with a small effort. Bull catches himself before kissing the bared line of it a second time.

 _All in good time._ He breaks himself away to make good on his part.

The toy is a pleasing weight in his hand as he lets it warm there. He thought twice about parting with his coin for it, in the cluttered emporium of magical wares off Denerim's main market that Dorian declared too full of provincial oddities. Nothing of real potential, apparently. The tone of his voice was probably half the reason why Bull went back later.

The other reason was, truth to tell, that Dorian's got to him. He's given himself over to Dorian to touch with magic-warmed hands, to lace frost across his skin for the shuddery contrast with the heat. To do plenty more than that, as trust grew between them.

Sighing in a dreamy rasp, Dorian pushes against Bull's oil-covered fingers. He's hard most of the way, in that languid middle between interest and urgency, and Bull's happy to keep him there for a bit longer, aware of little but Bull stroking slowly inside him.

The plug curves at a sharp cant, its wide base carved with runes. A beautiful thing, in its way, and so is the tremor through Dorian's body and breath as Bull slides it into him. He groans out the first syllable of a word. Bull twists the fat, squat toy a measured half-circle by way of reproach, relishing the smothered sounds that Dorian makes straining not to speak.

"Not that bad for a back-country curiosity, I guess." He runs his knuckles down the side of Dorian's spine. A little groan of dismay betrays that Dorian has made the connection to his own earlier appraisal. "Good?"

Dorian shifts, bare feet braced on the floor. His left hand is curled into a slightly trembling fist, gripping a length of the scarf, but when he nods his head, Bull thinks it genuine. His eyes are shut, his face mostly concealed.

Bull touches his tousled hair, just to feel the familiar texture, the strands kinking with sweat. Brushing them to one side, he wills his hand not to dwell. "I'm gonna let you two entertain each other for a while. Still got work to do, you remember?"

Lust draws out his pauses as he tries to keep an easy tone. It won't be the first time he's made Dorian wait; repetition doesn't seem to dull the anticipation.

"Mm-hm." Dorian injects a healthy dash of skepticism into the noise. They've played such games before, left each other bound or teased to the brink or wearing some suitable novelty to heighten a later fulfillment.

"Afraid you'll get bored?" Bull kneads a circle into Dorian's buttock, lazily jostling the plug. "I've got you, sweetheart."

He remembers closing the toy in his fist to test it against the flesh of the palm, softer and more vulnerable. It felt cool then, the curved length just right for, say, his current plan. The rune in the base flares with dim warmth as his thumb finds it.

He remembers the startling, heady pulse that leapt along the toy, and his fingers squeezing around it.

Dorian jolts against the table with a rattle of wood and stammered words. "Holy Maker, _fuck_ , what is—"

Stalling his motion, Bull presses his lower back to the tabletop, some weight behind it. "Didn't say you could talk."

A second vibration thrums along the plug. Dorian's throat works. Fuck, Bull wants to lean into his back, feel him as he feels the steady, intermittent shocks of sensation. He's not sure who he's got to thank for this wicked trifle, but Dorian's first reaction's worth every sovereign he spent.

"Now." Bull wets his own mouth. "I'm gonna finish fixing my gear. Then I'll fuck you good and deep till you come—" He strokes Dorian's side, watches the muscles of his hip and buttock go taut. "—And keep going till you're hard again."

Dorian's got his elbows to the table, fists together, his head hanging free. Control and need are written in the lines of his limbs. No word rises from him.

"You're not to come," Bull says, a rough, hoarse command, "before I'm inside you."

Cleaning the pieces of his armour should be rote. He's done it in stifling heat, after days without sleep, or with barely thawed fingers. The growing light plunges misty shafts into the room through the shutters, laying one across the table, another upon the floor like a path to lead his eye.

His hands rub oil into leather straps and scrape the boiled, hardened parts with plain rags. Dorian's eyes are near lidded, their gleam glazed by dammed desire. He's naked and defiant, lost and right there.

Bull wants him so that it hurts.

The toy and its simple, devious enchantment work him towards some high place of pleasure. His hips strain back, as if he didn't know if he wants to pry it free or pull it deeper. Bull knew exactly how far in it should go to be a tease, a thrill, an inescapable frustration.

Burying his head into a bent arm, Dorian bites down on his noises. His muscles tighten and relax. A few fine droplets fall to the floor from the tip of his full, beautiful cock.

Bull hears himself make a sound that should be a warning but is too edged with longing. An unravelled thread in the greave's fastening needs to be re-stitched.

 _Ask me._ Dorian's silence might be all that holds Bull together. Did he think about that when he demanded it? _Ask me and I'll give you anything._

The rules were set, and neither of them has called an end. His own breaths grow shallower as he threads the needle, its silver spine shaking a bit in his grip. Denial's worth it at times: the gut-tightening endurance of the wait, the way it seems to sharpen every sense.

Dorian's fingers, winding themselves in the slack of the scarves, scrape the table. Sweat paints damp tracks across his back. His sigh comes as a soft whine, his spine a wrought arch to corral his need.

Without thought, Bull stands, the same heavy tension pulling him up.

There's so much about Dorian that's beyond his control, both things he'd never want to rule and things that he can't. Ambition and ideal drive him back to Tevinter. The jaws of Imperium nobility may swallow him whole as easily as an assassin put a blade in his heart.

But Dorian gives his surrender freely. Trusts himself into Bull's hands, asks for it, revels in it.

This is within Bull's power to give to him. 

He fumbles with the laces of his trousers. His cock is achingly hard, and Dorian cries out as it slips along his flank when Bull's balance falters. _Steady._ He's not sure if he's telling himself or asking of Dorian. Fitting his fingers over Dorian's ribs, he finds a workable angle.

A twist of his hand tugs the still-thrumming toy away. Groaning under his breath, he presses his slicked cock against Dorian's hole, so the head sinks in a firming inch.

A smooth, strong thrust, and his balls make a slap against Dorian's buttocks. With a strangled protest, Dorian comes apart.

It draws itself out over seconds, with Bull pinning him and fucking him in long strokes, hilt-deep each time. "Ah, ah, ah—" His voice breaks into reedy snippets whose only common meaning is relief, brought on by the near-delirious orgasm.

"Shit." Bull allows himself a—a reprieve, a few blind sheer moments where he knows nothing but the rhythm of their unified, fused pleasure. "Dorian. Fuck, you're good, you're gorgeous."

Dorian clenches around him, a fleeting study in clean abandon, and slips down onto the table as the peak evens out from under him. His chest heaves as he gulps in deep, needful breaths. Bull's hand on his neck rouses a dry, trembling laugh from him.

"That's good," Bull murmurs, out of habit more than any need Dorian shows for reassurance. Sweat slickens their skin where their legs are pressed together, Bull still inside Dorian.

It'd take a few more quick thrusts for him to spend himself. He closes his eye, braces his other hand around Dorian's hip, and draws back as slowly as he can. Just as Dorian hums in faint dissatisfaction—he likes for Bull to linger like this, afterwards—Bull reverses the movement, filling him again. He's loose under the repeated strokes, unwound by his climax, taking one ragged breath after another.

This, Bull can give him. This free, floating space that's not part of any greater whole. Where the only thing that matters is their bodies folded together, and Bull has all the time in the world to tease Dorian's sated need into life again.

Not moving back, he rubs circles into Dorian's hip and thigh, looping to the inside and back up again. The unhurried attention to Dorian's skin muffles his own urgency; Dorian smells of musk and sage, some remnant of soap, shuffling sideways to root out a minor discomfort.

The scent of smoke tints the air when a candle gutters in a lantern. Dorian's breath hitches as Bull reaches his slackened cock. His face is canted down, but his shoulder muscles bunch.

Bull works with care: Dorian's tender and responsive, every touch a potential spark to his tinder nerves. Sunken somewhere a little under his own surface, he shifts into Bull's cupping palms and coaxing fingers, and Bull means to be thorough, not coarse.

He wraps stray locks of Dorian's hair in his fingers, and wonders, _Where will I go without you?_ It's a strange thought to come when there's nothing between them, when Dorian stirs irresistibly at Bull's grasp. His fingers lodge on the table's edge, his hips rise into the cant of Bull's own.

"Right," Bull says, more to himself. Dorian's cheek hollows as he bites at the inside.

 _Focus._ He begins a pace again, holding Dorian in place to control the angle of his thrusts. He slants them deeper, makes them firmer, building the loosely coiled lust. Dorian moves against him in stuttering starts, reaching, responding.

A word forms between Dorian's lips, not much more than a husk of sound. Bull's about to intercept him, about to remind or reassure him, but Dorian speaks before he can decide which to pick. 

" _Katoh_ ," Dorian breathes, lifting his head and his darkened eyes. "I—"

"Yeah." Made clumsy by the abrupt knowledge of the watchword, Bull brushes a knuckle against his jaw. "Heard you."

"No, no." Dorian seems to fumble, too. "No, it's all right, don't stop. I only—" As if it could patch his rare verbal lack, he turns his cheek against the back of Bull's hand. "I wanted to tell you."

Bull opens his palm for Dorian's cheek instead, feels him press a parched kiss to the curve of a finger. "Sorry."

Heroically, Dorian huffs. His voice is too tender for the words. "Regret hardly seems a—a proper sentiment to trot out in mid-copulation, no?"

Yielding to himself, Bull bends down to kiss Dorian's raised shoulder. The taste of salt and clean skin seems to settle him, like he's found a solid place to put his foot. "You want to go on?"

"A smidge slower, if you please. Your wondrous little trinket left me sore, but—oh, and I'd like to borrow that until you return. A fascinating design."

"You know," Bull says, "this is why I told you to shut up in the first place."

"Mmm." Tiptoeing, Dorian lets Bull slide out the rest of the way, then presses his ass snugly and shamelessly against his cock again. "Shall I change the subject? Perhaps to the unnumbered virtues of your virile member, which I _would_ like to sample a little further."

"Be happy you've got some merits of your own." Bull reaches for the oil. "Some days that's all that keeps me from kicking you out a window."

"Such slander." Dorian sighs, every inch an unjustly wounded soul, so Bull navigates the awkward angle to kiss him in reparation. They both sink into it by heady, swaying degrees. Bull tucks Dorian's thighs together and fucks him that way, his swelling cock caught in Bull's still-slippery hand.

There is Dorian: curved under him and against him, hands tied, gasping his desire into Bull's ear. Their kisses are scattered, incidental, cutting Dorian's muttered praise, jarring Bull delightfully out of his rhythm. When they both are already panting, their control cracking, Dorian whispers, "Bull, Bull, oh, _in me_ , please."

They finish in a mess of grasping hands and sweat-smoothed flesh. Bull stifles his rattled shout into Dorian's shoulder, where his teeth mark a purplish brand. He comes at last in a dozen short, rough strokes, and feels Dorian unravel in his hold mere seconds later. Dorian's name drops from him like a prayer, this joining the closest thing to exaltation that he can remember knowing.

It abates slowly. He's barely come back to himself when Dorian says, "Untie me."

His fingers are heavy, but the hemp is easily loosened enough for Dorian to wriggle his hands free. Figuring he might want to stretch his limbs, Bull stands back, to instead have Dorian wrap himself around him. He hooks a hasty arm under Dorian's leg to hold him aloft, Dorian's arms around his neck.

They teeter a little, together.

"Hey." Bull feels his thoughts see-sawing, too. "All good?"

"Andraste's arse, yes." Dorian's laugh is merry and wild. " _Kaffas_ , but I do love you. You are a marvel."

The moment seems to hiccup. Bull half expects to see the dust motes dangle frozen in the sunbeam across the table. It's not that the information is a revelation; it's not as if he hasn't called Dorian by the most intimate word in his vocabulary for a fair while now.

It just hadn't occurred to him what it'd mean to hear it, before or after the world broke them apart.

"You—are aware, of course." Dorian's voice slants into a hush. "That I rather fancy you."

Bull steps through a semicircle so he can prop himself against the table in turn. Tightens his hold of Dorian, warm and wary in his arms.

"Yeah, fire-spitter. Fancy you, too."


End file.
